


fiebre o alas perdidas

by stelleappese



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (I'm not sure about it yet), Cannibalism, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Murder, Suicide Attempt, mentions of - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-13 07:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14744714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelleappese/pseuds/stelleappese
Summary: How much is Harry's soul worth, anyway?





	fiebre o alas perdidas

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [my favorite poem ever](https://www.neruda.uchile.cl/obra/obramemorial1.html).  
> The Inuktitut I used came from [here](http://www.tusaalanga.ca/glossary/english), and I probably managed to butcher (uh, no pun intended?) something while trying to write in it, so... I apologize for that.
> 
> This fic was basically born because I love soft, gentle dudes, scary monsters, and the kind of beauty that will fuck you up if you look at it too directly. Also denial. Denial is one of my favorite things.

_If Harry concentrates enough, the noise of bells ringing behind him and the bickering of his siblings disappear._

_He’s crouching a few feet from the lazily breaking waves, trying to breathe as quietly as he can. Seagulls are screeching, not as much flying as levitating, occasionally diving into the shimmering, impossibly calm sea. From time to time, the wind makes Harry’s curls whip his face, but he doesn’t do anything to stop them._

_He knows perfectly well there is a dense row of white houses almost right behind him, with smoke coming out of the chimneys on their gray or black sloped roofs, and people living their lives inside them. But there are moments, there are fractions of moments, when the sound of crashing waves and the calling of seagulls are so loud, he may as well be the last person in the whole world._

_“Here,” Archibald says, and stuffs something in Harry’s pocket before running off again. Upon investigation, it turns out to be a round, smooth, black rock. Harry looks at it, then at his brothers and sister. Their footprints have made a mess of the sand, which was untouched apart from small rows of three-toed prints left by birds, when they arrived to the beach. Agnes has dried up algae in her hair. Robert’s hands are cupped and brimming with seashells. Harry finds himself grinning, squinting into the sun to look at his siblings running around wildly._

_He gets up, meaning to go ask them what game they’re playing, and a flash of color catches his eye, somewhere near one of the jagged rocks coming out of the sand on his right. There is very little thought put into whether he should walk closer or not._

_A starfish is stranded on the sand, close enough to the water for the waves to brush it, but not enough to pick it up and carry it away. It’s red in the middle, fading into something like orange on the edges. So far, Harry has only ever seen pinkish, shriveled, dried up starfish. But this one is plump, squishy to the touch, and, to Harry’s surprise, sort of fuzzy._

_It doesn’t react when Harry pokes it with his finger the first time, but the second there is a weak but perceptible twitch. It’s alive, Harry realizes. It’s not a_ thing _yet; it’s still a_ being _._

_He could pick it up, bring it home. Put it in a jar and wait for it to become an object. The rustling of the sea sounds like breathing. Harry pictures the starfish losing its bright color, becoming dull and dry._

_He stands back up, kicks off his shoes, hops on one foot as he slips off one sock, then the other; he rolls up the legs of his trousers. The water will be cold, he thinks. But he still picks up the starfish, gently, gingerly, worried it might crumble underneath his fingertips. He starts walking, feet sinking into the wet sand._

*

His ears are ringing, almost louder than the howling of the wind, than the flapping of the tent around him. His entire being feels heavy. He’s surprised he hasn’t sunk all the way through the earth, because he definitely doesn’t feel like something out of the realm of possibility.

Harry has been sitting on his hard, uncomfortable bed for what seems like a lifetime. He should be thinking about what Hickey ordered him to do, about how to deal with it. Instead, he thinks of nothing. He stares at nothing. Until the threatening words outside bring him out of his head.  
“Let him be,” he shouts, “Give me forty minutes.”

What is it that makes a man a man? Are there rules for it? Where is the line that needs to be crossed for a man to become… something else?  
Is the line at letting someone die to save oneself? Is it at butchering a human being like an animal? Is it at eating his flesh?

He looks at the unmoving shape of the corpse on the makeshift operating table in his tent.

Either way, he thinks, his soul will come out of this damaged. There are cracks in it already, just from thinking about it, just from considering how to cut his losses. What will be asked of him next? When Hickey runs out of men, what will he do? He’s already keeping an eye on Captain Crozier and his men. Who will he order Harry to butcher next? The Captain himself? Mr. Blanky? Captain Fitzjames?

How much is Harry’s soul worth, anyway? More that Captain Crozier’s entire party?

*

_“I’ve always found it unsettling, but the natural world hardly cares about human sensitivities,” Harry says. Words were starting to drift from underneath his eyes, so he’s abandoned his notes. Fitzjames noticed him looking a bit dazed, so he set his book down and started to chat about what he was reading._   
_“I believe it isn’t something only bears do, as well,” Fitzjames says, “I’ve been told raccoons and foxes also chew their limbs off when trapped.”_   
_“I’m not sure I could ever do that,” Harry admits. He looks at his hand, flexes his fingers. Thinks of what it would be like having nothing instead of it. “The amputation does not worry me as much as the loss I would feel.”_   
_“I suppose you’d have to decide whether you value your life more than your limb.”_   
_“To be that desperate…” Harry whispers._   
_“There is no shame in it,” Fitzjames says, with a shrug. “Being scared, being desperate, can save your life. Preserving life, yours as well as that of others, is a sacred duty. There is no shame in wanting to live.”_

*

“If I were a braver man, I'd kill Mr Hickey. That would mean my death too. But I'm hungry. I'm hungry, and I want to live.”

Hodgson doesn’t speak for a long time, after that, but Harry feels his presence behind him. Even if he wanted to sit up and talk to him, he doesn’t think he would be capable of doing it. His body refuses to move. The fact his lungs are still working is almost surprising.

But he understands. There is blood on his hands and wounds in his soul, but he understands. He, too, wants to live.

“Lieutenant?” he whispers, his voice hoarse, rusty. “Next time, do not eat it.”

*

_Harry is so absorbed by his thought that the softest touch on his shoulder makes him flinch._

_"Is something wrong, Mr. Goodsir?" Fitzjames asks. His lips are dry and cracked, his eyes tired, eyelashes frozen solid. His face is worryingly pale, apart from the splotches of red on his wind-burned cheeks._

_Harry looks at him._

_Theoretically, he already knew they were walking on the sea._   
_Theoretically._   
_But he has never felt it so deeply before: they are suspended on top of an abyss, with only a sheet of ice between them and the bottomless void._

_And yet, instead of fear, he's been gripped by a vertiginous awe: the sun has come and gone, and the sky above them is as depthless as the sea below them. The aurora, the countless stars above him, they give the sky a perspective it never had before; they make it more than a flat blanket on top of the world._

_He is, Harry has just come to realize, such a small creature. A speck of dust. His life, the blink of an eye. And instead of feeling lost because of it, he feels such an heartbreaking wonder…_

_"Mr. Goodsir?" Fitzjames asks again, giving Harry's shoulder a gentle squeeze._   
_"My head is spinning, is all." Harry says._

*

The camp is quiet, apart from the flapping of the tents.

Harry almost wishes there were human sounds again, even though the last sounds that echoed in the camp were screaming, gagging, moaning, crying, begging.

He looks at the bodies on the frozen ground, all still, all empty. Hodgson didn’t listen to him. Maybe he didn’t understand. Maybe he was too hungry to recognize the sickly sweet taste of poison on the flesh he was eating. Maybe he didn’t care anymore.

Harry’s grandfather saved lives. Harry’s father saves lives. Harry’s four brothers, they also save lives. The things he learned, all his hard work, should never have been used this way.

He’s numb enough not to know whether he’s done it to save his life, or to save others from having their flash torn off and eaten, their bones boiled to suck the marrow from them.

He’s too tired, too hungry, to think about it now. But he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to spend any more time in the camp, in the presence of a death he summoned himself.

He turns around. He starts walking.

Is is possible his very bones have started rusting inside his body? Because it sure feels like it. They seem to scrape against one another as he walks, creaking like the ice around him. But the pain is worse when he lingers, so he just keeps on going.

He’s read somewhere that when men have no sense of direction, they think they’re walking straight but they’re actually walking in circles. There’s a flash of pages being turned, in his head; of the way the light fell into his parents’ drawing room, the singing of birds, the smoke rising from a cup of tea. How big would those circles be? How long would it take him to meet his own footprints again?

The wind picks up. Snow starts falling, but it’s not the violent, furious snow that has been plaguing the expedition during the endless winter night. It’s as fine as powder, it twirls in the air, shimmering all around him. It gives the bleak surroundings an otherworldly, enchanted look.

Harry doesn’t think he has any tears left to cry, but his eyes prickle anyway, and his throat feels tight.

He goes still.

*

_Harry is too self-conscious, even in the cold, to move closer to Fitzjames, so he’s immensely relieved when Fitzjames does it first. The temperature dropped steeply during the past few days. The light itself feels crisp; it makes the light Harry is used to seem dirty and opaque._

_“I have always imagined icebergs like big chunks of ice,” Fitzjames says, his breath turning into puffs of white, his shoulder pressing into Harry’s “Transparent. Possibly rather cloudy. Nothing like this. And the sheer_ size _of them…”_

_Harry nods; he doesn’t speak._

_There have been cathedrals in which Harry stepped foot that inspired less awe than the towers of ice that are welcoming them to the Arctic. Both Harry and Fitzjames are looking up, squinting at the brightness of the sky and at the glow of the icebergs. Harry knows it’s probably just sunlight being reflected on the ice, but his eyes trick him, and the icebergs seem to be radiating light from their very core._

_And the color. There is so much color. There is white, deep blue, teal, bottle green, turquoise. Ever-shifting; with every inch they move forward, brand new shades keep manifesting before their eyes._

_“I had no idea something so beautiful could exist,” Harry murmurs. “My eyes see it, but my mind is not sure it is real.”_   
_“When you live in a place like London, after a while you give in to habit.” Fitzjames says, “You go through the motions, you focus on the task ahead. And you forget you are capable of feeling wonder. Modern life does not make it easy. Remembering the world is such a beautiful place, that is.”_

*

_Lady Silence is sitting on the floor, looking dejected but not scared, which Harry counts as a victory in of itself. She gives him a blank look as he walks in, eyes darting on the single cup on the tray he’s carrying. It’s late, and she’s been on the ship long enough to figure out no meal will be coming until morning._

_“I was thinking,” Harry says, kneeling in front of her, “That I know of nobody who dislikes chocolate. You see, my nephew? He was about one year old when I made him taste chocolate for the first time. I shouldn’t think a child that young would know to have much of a predilection with anything, but he did like it.”_   
_He doesn’t mention that he was lying awake in bed as he thought about it. Not that Lady Silence would understand, but you never know._   
_“So, hm. Maybe the issue, here, is bitterness? I’m not sure your palate is used to very sweet food, so I only put in a little sugar, but I assure you, it is good,” he says._

_Lady Silence doesn’t move a muscle. She just frowns and gives the cup another suspicious look._

_Harry hesitates, then picks up the cup and takes a sip of hot chocolate. “It’s good, see? Piujuq.” he holds out the cup to her._   
_Lady Silence finally shifts. She accepts the cup, takes a diffident sip, then her black eyes go wide._   
_“See?” Harry smiles, clapping his hands against his knees. “Piujuq!”_

_She doesn’t smile, not quite, but as she takes another sip, it looks to Harry as if her eyes do._

*

There is beauty, Harry thinks, all around him. Of course there is.

He can see it still, even after all he’s been through, even after all he’s done. He can see it. But does he deserve it?

His eyes burn. There is not a single inch of his body that does not ache. So many different kinds of pain, too. Burning, dull, piercing. There is even beauty in that, in the fact he’s capable to feel all that, to tell every single kind of pain from the other.

But does he deserve it?

*

_There is a clock ticking in Captain Franklin’s office. Harry considers the sea snail he’s been sketching, then looks up at Fitzjames. He’s sitting on the other side of the table, feet unceremoniously up on a chair, head resting against a hand. The flickering candlelight makes shadows dance on his face, wrinkles and grooves deepen. He looks so focused, so utterly engrossed in the world that’s taking shape inside his head. Harry tilts his head a little and keeps stealing glances, looking at Fitzjames’ eyes as they follow the words on the pages._

*

_“Aggaut,” Lady Silence says, pointing at her forearm._  
 _“Aggaut,” Harry repeats, slowly._  
 _“Aggaak,” she raises both her hands._  
 _“Aggaak?” Harry murmurs, “Both of them? Uh… Malguk?”_  
 _Lady Silence nods. She reaches out, grabs both of Harry’s hands, and repeats: “Aggaak.”_  
 _“All right,” Harry says. “How would I tell someone, uh… Harry,” he points at himself, “Qua-jima-juq Inuktitut,” he says, slowly and hesitantly. He_ thinks _it means ‘he knows Inuktitut.’ He hopes so, at least. “Quanuq?” he asks. How? How would he tell someone he speaks the language?_  
 _It makes little sense to him as it is, the way he’s phrased it, but he doesn’t have the words to properly ask._  
 _But, for some reason, Lady Silence understands anyway. It’s something Harry cannot explain, but the way they both seem to read one another is the main reason why he’s managed to learn as much as he has in such a short time. Lady Silence nods to herself, then says: “Inuktituusuungujunga.”_  
 _Harry stares at her for a moment. “Inuktitutuus…” he starts, then goes quiet. Lady Silence gives him an amused look. The way she’s obviously trying not to laugh makes Harry chuckle first. Smiling suits her, he thinks. It makes her dark eyes shine._  
 _“Again, please?” he asks, and Lady Silence obliges_.

*

_There was a loud chattering and busts of laughter, before, but after eating and drinking, the picnic has fallen into a comfortable, satisfied silence._   
_Jane and Agnes, who have just recently moved from wild fights that made the Goodsir household tremble to being the best of friends, are sitting side by side, whispering and giggling. John and Joseph seem to have fallen asleep at the exact same time, and Robert sits next to Harry, a book on his lap, reading quietly._   
_He’s an extremely expressive reader. He smiles and frowns at the pages._   
_The countryside is flat and monotonous, at first glance, but when examined closely, Spring can be spotted everywhere. In the tiny, delicate flowers; in the birds that flock above them, the insects that buzz around them._   
_There’s a ladybug slowly making its way across Harry’s glasses. He sit sup, takes them off as gently as he can, and lets the ladybug move on to his knuckles, then deposits it on Robert’s book. He can see the moment Robert’s eyes leave the words and move to the little red and black dot exploring the book._   
_They booth look at it, without a word, until it reaches the edge of the book, perches up on the spine, spreads out it wings, and flies away._

*

There is blood on the ice. Again.   
Harry is lying down on the rocky, frozen ground, looking at the way his own blood pulses out of the slashes on his wrists. His heartbeat reverberates across his whole body.  
He sighs. His eyelids feel heavy. The wind has died down.  
He curls up in a ball and closes his eyes.

*

_The sound of crashing waves._

_The screeching of seagulls._

_Harry’s siblings shouting and laughing on the beach behind him._

_The achingly bright infinite sea in front of him._

_The water lapping at his calves._

_He sets the starfish down._

*

When Harry wakes up, the pain in his wrists is bone-deep.

He expected cold, but there is only softness and warmth. He holds one of his hands up and frowns at the jagged wound, already bright pink with a tender layer of brand new skin.

He blinks.

In his mind, he sees every stage of the healing of a wound. He cut deep. He knew what he was doing. He tries to think of an explanation, but he can’t seem to make his brain respond properly.

That’s when he realizes that the soft thing he’s lying against is moving, steadily rising and falling, and he finds himself alert enough to notice the vibration underneath his head is the loud, loud, loud beating of a massive heart.

The tuunbaq must know Harry is awake. It stirs, twisting its long neck to look at him with its eerily human-like face, and Harry freezes, his heart firmly lodging itself in his throat. The black of the tuunbaq’s eyes is so deep it reflects the bright, cloudless sky. Its fangs are covered, its body relaxed.

It huffs, stands up with so little care Harry stumbles back on the ground and has to struggle to pull himself up. It gives Harry a look, walks a few paces away, comes back to deposit a dead seal at Harry’s feet. When Harry doesn’t react, the tuunbaq growls and brusquely nudges the dead animal towards him.

“Is that for me?” Harry asks, but his voice doesn’t cooperate. He swallows, tries again. “Niqi?” he asks. Food? The tuunbaq plops down, his breath making the powdery snow rise in big puffs.

*

_It takes Harry a while to become fully awake. He oscillates between sleep and consciousness for a while; his dreams taking on the warm lighting around him._

_The first thing he sees when the world comes into focus is his notebook, precariously set on Lady Silence’s knees as she doodles on it. He’s resting his head against her shoulder, and he immediately feels his face go hot when he realizes how inappropriate it is._

_But she doesn’t seem to mind, and Harry has to admit he hasn’t been this warm and comfortable in years._

_Lady Silence is humming something, pressing too much into the paper as she finishes drawing what looks like a caribou._

_Would it really be such a bad thing if he closed his eyes again, just for a moment?_

*

The tuunbaq wants him to walk.

It makes is pretty clear, nudging Harry with its snout, picking him up by his clothes and growling when, once let go, Harry falls back down.

“You should have left me to my own devices,” Harry murmurs, massaging one of the many spots in his body that pulsate with pain.  
The sound that the tuunbaq makes is more of a vibration than anything else. Harry can feel it in his stomach, in his bones. It gives Harry as gentle a headbutt as it is capable of, and Harry ends up sprawled on the rocky ground. Even with his stomach full, he still feels too weak to even react.

So he doesn’t move. And the tuunbaq stops poking him and crouches down next to him.

*

_The log in the fireplace is big enough it will burn all the way through the night. As always, John and Joseph are bickering about something. Harry’s father is telling a story, his voice now cavernous, now full of wonder._   
_Midnight is approaching. Soon, the bells will ring, they will all put their coats on, and march together towards the church to celebrate the birth of Christ._   
_For now, Harry looks from the fireplace to the window, to the snow insistently falling outside._

*

He’s not sure exactly for how long he lies there. He thinks he fell asleep for a few minutes, maybe longer. The tuunbaq doesn’t move.

When Harry’s back hurts too much to stand it, he finally sits up, and his notebook slips from his pocket. He doesn’t remember taking it with him. He leafs through it, stops when his neat, dense handwriting leaves way to something else.  
There’s a page with ‘HARRY’ written on top of it in his own hand, and filled with bigger, messier ‘HARRY’s written in Lady Silence’s unsteady but determined handwriting.

He follows the word with his fingertip, sighs deeply.  
“All right,” he says, “All right.”

When he finally stands up, he keeps falling. His legs can hardly support his weight. The tuunbaq groans and grumbles its displeasure with having to wait for him, but it still stops until Harry manages to stand up. When Harry leans into it and holds on to his fur, the tuunbaq doesn’t seem to mind.

“I am sorry,” Harry whispers, after a long while. “We were told the world belonged to us. We didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

If the tuunbaq understands, or cares about Harry’s words, it doesn’t gives any sign of it. It keeps walking slowly, head low, annoyed but not angry.

There is a momentary burst of chaos in Captain Crozier’s camp, when Harry and the tuunbaq are spotted. Everything goes still by the time the tuunbaq stops walking and shakes itself like a wet dog, almost throwing Harry to the ground. It huffs again, pokes Harry with its snout, nudging him towards the camp.  
“I understand,” Harry says, then adds: “Nakurmiik.”  
He gets another groan and another nudge, then the tuunbaq sits and, again, waits.

Harry limps towards the camp. He doesn’t expect anybody to meet him halfway, not with the creature that has been killing them off one by one sitting right behind him, but, after a few steps, Captain Crozier marches straight up to him and grabs him before he can fall on his knees again.


End file.
